Here’s an interesting story about the UW system. The student government at UW-Eau Claire has voted to charge students a fee which would pay directly for pay raises for factulty and other instructional staff. The article is pretty good; the students who support the raise are clearly worried about their degrees being worth less as a result of the defection of professors who can get paid more elsewhere; the opponents see the move (rightly) as creeping privatization, in an environment in which there are moves among a significant group of legislators to cap both tuition and spending. Does anyone know if this is happening elsewhere?
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Dirk 12.02.05 at 10:49 am
Hey, I’m all in favor of raising pay for professors, and if I were a student (I’m not) I’d pay more for it. But, in return, can we have an end to the tenure system?
Thanks.
And also, can we have an end to the countless academic blogs where PhDs moan about being underpaid and not being able to find tenure-track jobs. The academic job market is no different from many others in that people think they are underpaid and somehow deserve high-paying stable employment, but these PhDs don’t seem to understand that. (I do not include Crooked Timber among the moaning blogs, but it is not hard to find dozens of them on the internet.)
Adam 12.02.05 at 11:11 am
When you said that this was happening at the UW, I got excited, thinking you meant the University of Washington, where I’m a grad student. I certainly hope the same thing happens here, and I’d be willing to pay out of pocket for it if a movement arose within the student body.
I think your worries about “creeping privatization” are unfounded, in the sense that the privitization of public research universities is far from “creeping” — it’s overt, and largely an historical rather than hypothetical matter. Private money underwrites almost everything we do in some way, and private sponsors are free to negotiate monopolies and buy naming rights to facilities. Unfortunately, the faculty isn’t seeing this money, and we’ve already lost dozens of excellent professors to schools whose administrations value them more. Hell, I’ll take private money from students over private money from corporations any day of the week, in terms of the damage it does to institutional free will.
otto 12.02.05 at 11:54 am
Tenure is about protecting research from well-organised private interests who try to smother criticism of private or political behaviour they advocate. Examples being Israeli lobby groups trying to remove professors critical of Israel at Columbia and pharmaceutical firms influencing publication and hiring decisions at medical schools. On balance, I’d say we could do with more tenure in academia, not less.
Put more bluntly, and even keeping the broad political flavour constant (which is not correct, outside interests have direct interest in changing the political flavour of research):
reseach with tenure = Harvey Mansfield,
research without tenure = American Enterprise Institute.
save_the_rustbelt 12.02.05 at 1:13 pm
Professors in the rustbelt states do not seem to comprehend that sick economies do not allow high pay for low teaching productivity.
harry b 12.02.05 at 1:54 pm
The economic arguments cut a lot of ways, and I’m not equipped to judge between them.
My sense is that there are legislators who think that state colleges should basically be about teaching and vocational training, and that converting them to this would be enough of a savings/benefit to offset the cost of having talented and ambitious students have to leave the state to get an elite education. They may be right: I’ve not seen any analyses that convince me one way or the other.
Other legislators think we should privatise UW Madison, thereby retainign an elite college here (and the economic benefits it brings), but saving the State money. Some people at UW Madison entertain this idea (not very publicly) not because they think its the best possible outcome, but because they think it is much better than death by a thousand cuts on the one hand, or the phenomena adam refers to on the other. (For example, I don’t think anyone doubts that a privatised UW Madison would pay its professors much more than the state-subsidised UW Madison does). I think this is politically unfeasible at least in the short-to-medium term: in the end, middle and upper middle class voters want at least a chance of getting highly subsidised elite education for their kids, and will punish legislators who deprive them of it (this is one reason why right-wing republicans lead the charge for capping tuition).
I didn’t mean to express a concern about creeping privatisation: I just meant to endorse the idea that this constituted a form of creeping privatisation. (I’d prefer open and full privatisation to creeping privatisation, but I don’t have a fixed view against either kind of privatisation, myself).
Tenure — I think tenure is all about cost-containment. If you want to get rid of tenure you have to be willing to pay for it, and my guess is that most taxpayers and consumers would rather save the money. There’s a nice explanation of all this on the Leiter site by Marcus Stanley:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/tenure_economic.html
Walt Pohl 12.02.05 at 3:30 pm
Dirk: I didn’t know participating in the labor market involved the surrender of all free speech rights to complain about your pay. Thanks for letting me know.
Slocum 12.02.05 at 5:08 pm
Other legislators think we should privatise UW Madison, thereby retainign an elite college here (and the economic benefits it brings), but saving the State money. Some people at UW Madison entertain this idea (not very publicly) not because they think its the best possible outcome, but because they think it is much better than death by a thousand cuts on the one hand, or the phenomena adam refers to on the other.
Well, no explicit decision really needs to be made, does it? It can happen bit by bit until you have essentially a private organization operating in state-owned facilities. I’d say that the University of Michigan is already a bit further down that road–the state pays for an ever decreasing fraction of the costs, tuition correspondingly rises much faster than inflation, and the university takes on more and more of the characteristics of an elite private university (big endowment, high salaries, private-school level tuition for out-of-state students of which there are a large number). It has been said that the Michigan law school is already private in all-but-name (only a very small fraction of its operating funds come from the state).
djw 12.02.05 at 8:35 pm
Adam: As a fellow grad student, I’ve taught at least a thousand or so UW(ashington) undergrads, and I can assure such a movement is exceedingly unlikely–almost inconceivable.
Not Right Now 12.02.05 at 9:52 pm
Examples being Israeli lobby groups trying to remove professors critical of Israel at Columbia
Effectively, this has already happened, and, yes, at Columbia. Many high-level visiting professors are brought on for a test-run before they are offered a tenure job. A well-publicized public campaign can dissuade a university from making an offer, whatever the professor’s educational, scholarly, or personal merits. If one were to hope to withstand such politicized scrutiny, one would have to have an unimpeachable record: not just well-regarded scholarly publications, not just generally good student testimonials, but a student body willing to turn out en masse in support. Maybe I’m generalizing from one specific case; it certainly made an impact on me.
Anarch 12.02.05 at 10:40 pm
Other legislators think we should privatise UW Madison, thereby retainign an elite college here (and the economic benefits it brings), but saving the State money.
And some of them (I’m looking at you, John Gard) just hate us.
aUWECprof 12.03.05 at 7:59 am
A few things.
First, state monies have gone down, and this move should it be approved is unlikely to accelerate that rate of cost shifting towards the student. It MIGHT lead to a lowering of that rate, or even a reversal. Hope springs eternal.
Second, and far more importantly from my perspective, is that these students are looking BEYOND themselves and at the larger system in place that is causing them problems. Tuition is going up. Do they continue to complain about that? Yes. Every year they complain and talk about how students are being priced out of higher education. But this group of students see the problem at a system level, and one that causes pain not only for themselves but for the (if I might say) high quality faculty that teaches them. The come to a plan, and throw a tiny fraction of their tuition towards the people that teach them.
They see the long term political trend that shifts costs. They see the effects on themselves. They see the effects on the system they inhabit beyond themselves. They see previous political action as failing to change the situation. The change strategies at a real, if small, cost to themselves to try to acheive their goals.
I think this is proof positive that the UWEC is doing good work at creating active, involved, and critically thinking citizens. Hurray for us!
Now excuse me while I go eat the meager bowl of porridge I can afford on my ever shrinking to inflation salary.
Jason Kuznicki 12.03.05 at 8:54 am
The academic job market is no different from many others in that people think they are underpaid and somehow deserve high-paying stable employment, but these PhDs don’t seem to understand that.
This is demonstrably false; the academic job market is quite different from others.
PhD candidates often do very nearly the same work as full professors, yet they are commonly paid at subsistence wages. You can forget all about having a family, either — no time and no money. All of this is understandable, and happens to some extent everywhere.
But when they graduate, new PhDs face an artificial job shortage, in part because universities are substituting graduate students (the people who will need jobs) for tenured professorships (the very jobs that they eventually seek). Both do roughly the same work, but the grad students do it cheaper. This is one reason why we complain about low wages — we know that they also mean fewer jobs later on: Whenever the universities try to cut costs, they hire more grad students. The job supply shrinks while the labor pool grows.
The results are pretty clear: In history, which is my field, the supply of entry-level jobs has been far smaller the pool of available candidates — for the past fifteen years. It is now common for an entry-level job to get hundreds of applicants, all of them well qualified. Hiring committees complain that they can’t make rational decisions anymore; new PhDs often have to go back to school just to find a decent job that isn’t beneath their already-demonstrated competence.
And don’t even get me started about adjuncting: Sure, low pay is to be expected at entry level. But no benefits at all? And a guaranteed pink slip at the end of the year? What other profession treats its entry-level workers so badly?
Note also that it would cost the universities money to offer job counseling for transitioning out of academics, so in most places it’s a taboo subject. Once in a while, some department or another will try to cut back on grad student admissions (Ohio State made a heroic effort while I was there), but usually it works out badly for them. The higer-ups start wondering why that one department is so expensive and why its professors are turning out fewer publications, and eventually the whole thing goes back to the way it was.
So I’m sorry if you think we’re whining, but it’s not just a question of low pay. For many, it’s a question of no jobs at all, and if there’s anything in the world worth complaining about, unemployment is probably it.
otto 12.03.05 at 9:18 am
Is this the evil twin of the “go to grad school” CT post?
Christopher Ball 12.03.05 at 3:27 pm
Tenure is not “about protecting research from well-organised private interests who try to smother criticism of private or political behaviour they advocate.” If it is, it is not very effective. First, a significant amount of research is done by tenure-track but untenured scholars. They can be fired or not granted tenure if pressure is brought to bear or if they fear pressure woud be brough to bear based on the direction of their research. Second, tenure does not guarantee salary increases. A school can punish unruly tenured professors by not raising and even cutting their pay at non-unionized faculty. Third, some research is very expensive; faculty need internal grants or external ones to conduct their research. Being tenured but un-funded for political reasons can prevent research from being performed (this applies more to the naturarl sciences than the humanities). Fourth, universities have a number of annoying rules that are routinely ignored, but if an administration wants to it can suddenly enforce them against an unwanted but tenured professor.
What tenure does offer is some level of job security for those who have performed sufficient research in their discipline. In return for foregoing more lucrative but less secure employment, professors get less lucrative but more secure employment. Those at top institutions don’t suffer financially by any means, but compared to their peers in for-profit professions (law, finance, consulting, for-profit science rersearh), they are under-payed.
Christopher Ball 12.03.05 at 3:29 pm
That last sentence should haev read:
“Those at top institutions don’t suffer financially by any means, but compared to their peers in for-profit professions (law, finance, consulting, for-profit science research), they are under-paid.”
Never post before previewing.
otto 12.03.05 at 4:23 pm
Re. 13, none of what you suggest is an indication that tenure is not “about protecting research from well-organised private interests who try to smother criticism of private or political behaviour they advocate.†You mention lots of difficulties faced by tenured professors under pressure from outside interests. But, at the margin, these pressures would be much worse if the tenured professor could also EASILY LOSE THEIR JOB. But they can’t – or only with extraordinary difficulty and agony for the university administration. The difficulties you mention are in fact good arguments for keeping – and indeed strengthening – tenure.
Dirk 12.03.05 at 5:48 pm
Walt and Jason:
Ivory tower types often seem to misunderstand the world of work for society at large. They imagine that their undergraduate roommates who became lawyers are making lots more money and having lots more fun and the poor teachers are stuck with ungrateful students, meddling and inflexible administrators, and no respect from society for foregoing the big bucks and pursuing noble academics. But as far as I can see, there is no difference between (1) junior college professors and graduate students and (2) and millions of other people who believe they are underpaid and under appreciated.
Where did people get the idea that you should be able to find a job in your field of study? Look at any survey of college graduates 10 years after graduation. Most are not directly working in their field of major/degree. It’s not just because they found another job they liked better; many academic fields do not correspond to the job market directly. There’s nothing wrong with that; I do not advocate turning universities into trade schools. And there is not that much of a difference between undergrad and grad school – it’s a mistake to think that PhD programs promise you’ll be a professor some day. They are not vocational programs.
I first realized this in high school when so many of my classmates decided they would pursue marine biology in college. How many marine biologists does the world need? Not many, but they were interested in the field, so that’s what they went for.
When I was an engineer, I saw how the large engineering companies rely on immigrants to keep salaries low. And when there was a boom in environmental engineering in the early 1990s, colleges put in new programs to train people for this field, only to have the job market decline soon after. That’s the nature of a dynamic economy.
PhD students do the same work as tenured faculty for a lower salary? Think you deserve more money and more opportunities? Welcome to the club. How many programming jobs have been outsourced to the Third World in the past decade? Salaries for US programmers are not what they would be. Gee, this isn’t what those programmers thought would happen when they got their computer science degrees. How many offices are full of people staffed from temp agencies – people with lower salaries and benefits than their education and background should get them.
It wasn’t until blogs became popular a few years ago that I realized so many academics had this “poor me†attitude and thought of themselves as a persecuted class. A PhD does not guarantee you a tenure-track job at a prestigious school or even a teaching job at a community college. There are too many PhDs for this to be the case. Too many smart people for jobs that require smart people and pay well. It’s not just academia.
engels 12.03.05 at 10:12 pm
#13 The first part of your argument seems to be: the purpose of burglar alarms can’t be to stop houses getting burgled, since it is still possible to burgle a house even if it has an alarm.
As for the second: even if that explains why academics are comparatively poorly paid, it does not explain why tenure exists. Why are academics offered terms which are low risk, low return and not average risk, average return?
Dirk 12.03.05 at 10:35 pm
Walt and Jason: Ivory tower types often seem to misunderstand the world of work for society at large. They imagine that their undergraduate roommates who became lawyers are making lots more money and having lots more fun and the poor university teachers are stuck with ungrateful students, meddling and inflexible administrators, and no respect from society for foregoing the big bucks and pursuing noble academics. But as far as I can see, there is no difference between (1) junior college professors and graduate students and (2) and millions of other people who believe they are underpaid and under appreciated.
Where did people get the idea that you should be able to find a job in your field of study? Look at any survey of college graduates 10 years after graduation. Most are not directly working in their field of major/degree. It’s not just because they found another job they liked better; many academic fields do not correspond to the job market directly. There’s nothing wrong with that; I do not advocate turning universities into trade schools. And there is not that much of a difference between undergrad and grad school – it’s a mistake to think that PhD programs promise you’ll be a professor some day. They are not vocational programs.
I first realized this in high school when so many of my classmates decided they would pursue marine biology in college. How many marine biologists does the world need? Not many, but they were interested in the field, so that’s what they went for.
When I was an environmental engineer in the early 1990s there was talk about the hazardous waste problems being so big that the main limitation was the size of the pool of qualified professionals. Colleges put in new programs to train people for this field, only to have the job market decline soon after. That’s the nature of a dynamic economy.
PhD students do the same work as tenured faculty for a lower salary? Think you deserve more money and more opportunities? Welcome to the club. How many programming jobs have been outsourced to the Third World in the past decade? Salaries for US programmers are not what they would be. Gee, this isn’t what those programmers thought would happen when they got their computer science degrees. How many offices are full of people staffed from temp agencies – people with lower salaries and benefits than their education and background should entitle them too.
It wasn’t until blogs became popular a few years ago that I realized so many academics had this “poor me†attitude and thought of themselves as a persecuted class. A PhD does not guarantee you a tenure-track job at a prestigious school or even a teaching job at a community college. There are too many PhDs for this to be the case. Too many smart people for jobs that require smart people and pay well. It’s not just academia.
jprime314 12.03.05 at 10:58 pm
Its fun how things come full circle given long enough. The first European universities were begun 900 years ago when students hired their professors directly, set the terms of employment, number of lectures, vacation time, etc.
Personally, I think I’d get a better deal from my students then some of the professors in my department…so I’m all for privitization. Let tenure be damned.
allan 12.04.05 at 2:18 am
Creeping privatization is a good start.
Ridding ourselves of the whole (hole) public school system would be a good end result.
Jan 12.04.05 at 9:34 am
I’m a member of the UWEC community, and have a few words to add. (My opinions are my own, and not necessarily those of any other member of the UWEC community or administration.)
First, the students at UWEC have chosen in the past to charge themselves extra for special programs, notably a first year experience program and student/faculty collaborative research grants/programs. They recognize that these programs make a positive impact on their education. (Here’s a link to our page on undergraduate research: http://www.uwec.edu/advantage/research.htm)
They also recognize that the state of Wisconsin has had serious budget problems for a number of years. Faculty pay hasn’t kept up with inflation, while benefits have been cut so that more pay goes into the faculty share of health insurance, for example.
More seriously, the University of Wisconsin system has taken cuts to operating expenses far out of proportion to its place in the state budget. We’ve cut classes, lost tenure lines, used adjuncts, increased class size, put off basic building maintenance. We’ve cut enrollment.
The students feel the impact, especially of cut classes; it’s harder and harder for students to get the classes they want/need to take in a given semester because there just aren’t enough seats available.
Students have offered a gesture, meaningful, indeed. The other faculty I’ve spoken to are moved and impressed by the level of support students show. (We also have concerns about the precedent that might be set.)
UWEC serves about 10,000 students; a large percentage of our students are first generation college students. When I ask students where else they considered going to school, they tend to mention only other public institutions. Many of our students work at least part time to afford college.
My point is that these students wouldn’t be able to afford (or even see themselves considering) a private college/university education. Even with the additional $20 they propose to add to their fees, our fees are a far cry from private school tuitions. (This year’s fees are $5178 for a resident.)
Further, UWEC isn’t a research I university. While we have a few masters level programs, they primarily serve area teachers trying to improve skills, students transitioning to other graduate programs, and students enhancing professional skills. So far as I know, our masters students don’t TA, certainly not in the way graduate students do at PhD granting institutions.
So there’s no chance that we’re going to privatize, even if UW Madison could and wanted to.
What we do, we do well: we’re consistently ranked as one of the top regional universities in the area. (See, for example: http://www.uwec.edu/advantage/rankings.htm)
States started sponsoring schools to provide educational opportunities for students who couldn’t afford a private education in order to provide themselves with an educated citizenry. The hope is that an educated citizenry will govern itself well, provide and embrace economic opportunity, and enhance the quality of life for everyone in the state. Wisconsin has had a strong history of public education.
The question is whether the taxpayers of Wisconsin are willing to see the big picture and pay more in taxes for the benefits of that educated citizenry. As one of those taxpayers, I’m willing.
One final point: graduate students at some schools do indeed teach (and do research), and in that they do some of the work professors do. But professors do much more, including advising and governance. Don’t underestimate the importance of governance: faculty in a given area have the expertise to develop curricula and make curricular changes; administrators simply don’t have specific expertise in every field to govern or evaluate work in that field. Faculty are also responsible for managing, mentoring, and certifying graduate students in their field.
(Sorry to go on so long.)
Walt Pohl 12.04.05 at 10:59 am
Dirk: So what? You don’t think programmers and temp workers have web sites where they complain? I and most of my family are in the computer industry. What do we talk about at family gatherings? Outsourcing.
Ph.D. programs are 100% vocational programs. If you go to philosophy grad school because you want to contemplate Plato for 4 years, you’ll be out the door. Everything in a Ph.D. program is subordinated to training you to be a college professor.
Jason Kuznicki 12.04.05 at 11:42 am
Ivory tower types often seem to misunderstand the world of work for society at large. They imagine that their undergraduate roommates who became lawyers are making lots more money and having lots more fun and the poor university teachers are stuck with ungrateful students, meddling and inflexible administrators, and no respect from society for foregoing the big bucks and pursuing noble academics.
This isn’t at all what I imagine. I simply imagine that my undergraduate roommates actually have respectable jobs of one sort or another. And my imagination is entirely correct on that score.
Meanwhile, I’m working a temporary job with almost no intellectual dimension to it at all. My career prospects in history are small, and, thanks to the one-dimensionality of graduate programs (which offer zero support in finding careers outside the field), my long-term prospects of any type are also doubtful. Compare this to the technical fields, where many students end up working outside their area of expertise (and where their professors have no serious objection to it!), and I hope you will see that Walt and I have some legitimate complaints.
Washburn 12.04.05 at 11:45 am
Don’t mourn. Organize.
Duh.
Christopher Ball 12.04.05 at 12:20 pm
Re Otto (#15) and Engels (#16), I do not oppose tenure; I object to the argument that tenure is necessary because it insulates academics from outside interference. I don’t think that it does for the reasons I stated. The most serious problem is that untenured scholars attempting to get tenure have incentives to structure their research agenda so that it is important within their discipline’s parameters but anodyne outside the ivory tower.
Re Engels’ second point, I think the risk/return is average/average, not low/low. Not all aspiring academics get tenured; those rejected must seek employment outside academe or be under-employed within it. An alternative would be to offer fixed-year contracts rather than tenure, but most excellent faculty are likely to reject such options for schools offering tenure instead. Unproductive tenured faculty are punished — they don’t get promoted to “full professor” and are paid less and granted less research support than their more productive peers.
otto 12.04.05 at 1:40 pm
The reasons you stated contra tenure as insulation are not convincing. Comments 15 and 16 basically state “At the margin, tenure helps insulation”. You have not provided a response.
“The most serious problem is that untenured scholars attempting to get tenure have incentives to structure their research agenda so that it is important within their discipline’s parameters but anodyne outside the ivory tower.”
Better than the alternative: no disciplinary rigour and anodyne from the point of view of well organised private interests.
PersonFromPorlock 12.04.05 at 3:48 pm
Interesting. But what will happen if the students decide to implement merit pay? We have all sat through classes where the sum total of human knowledge diminished every time the professor’s lips moved; surely it will eventually occur to the students that they can now say “Aha! No tip for you, Professor Jones!”
If so, I predict a great wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Michael O'Hare 12.05.05 at 4:56 pm
The university is presumably optimizing prof salaries in response to various factors it deems important already. Why won’t the student fund merely substitute for a raise that would otherwise have been provided at some time in the future?
Anarch 12.06.05 at 3:09 pm
…that would otherwise have been provided at some time in the future?
I think you just answered your own question.
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